“I know what your parents are like,” Nia said, kissing her teeth. She deepened her voice to a surprisingly accurate imitation of my father’s. “Angela! What is this B+? Clearly you are off playing the fool in the city. Come study at home; we definitely won’t lock you in your room with your books. Maybe you can even find a nice husband under your pillow.”
“Ha,” I said humorlessly, remembering the realities of Step again.
Nia pulled back and held me at arm’s length, her eyes flitting over my face in concern.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “You’ve been through it, haven’t you? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I wasn’t, not entirely, but the thick cloud of misery I’d waded through yesterday had lifted over the course of the day. It was as though my mind had simply decided that it was tired of being sad. Or, I thought, as if that stupid cheating cute boy hit a hard reset button in your brain.
“Every day I thank the Lord that he made me a lesbian. Liking straight men is a curse,” Nia continued. “I’m sorry about Frederick. And about this new guy, too.” She zeroed in on my neck. “Though I’ve got to admit that Water Tribe necklace is dope.”
I’d forgotten I still had it on. Swiveling the chain around my neck, I unhooked the latch and held the necklace out to Nia.
“You want it?” I said. “You can have it.”
Nia laughed, wagging her head.
“Nah, girl, keep your trophies,” she said.
“Fine,” I whined. I wandered into my bedroom and dropped it unceremoniously into my pile of tangled costume jewelry. “At least Frederick’s trophies all died. Small mercies, I guess.”
“All those fucking flowers,” Nia said, rolling her eyes. I snickered as I walked back into the living room; Nia had seen the genius behind my flower pranks, even if Frederick hadn’t.
We settled at the dining room table, and I sprawled out across it, inhaling deeply. Against all odds, I felt . . . relieved. Regardless of the disastrous result, Step study block was now officially behind me, leaving me with three precious weeks off with no commitments, no lectures, no exams. It was the most freedom I would see until my fourth year. Whenever I said this out loud, Nia would scoff and inform me that some people have jobs and haven’t had a summer since college. I would remind her that she had once complained to me that she’d binged all the good shows on Netflix and now had nothing to watch, and that she hardly went a day without reminding me how glad she was that she’d never have to study again. Oh gross, she’d say, pointing at my computer screen. What is that? Half the time “that” would be a harmless histology slide, which for all intents and purposes consisted of amorphous pink blobs, but she’d insist that the dark purple nuclei triggered her trypophobia and skitter away squealing. Once, for fun, I’d shown her what schistosomiasis of the eye looked like, and she’d nearly reintroduced both of us to her lunch.
But now, instead of trudging to campus for an eight a.m. lecture or to the library for fourteen hours of caffeine-powered studying, I would be doing my best to sleep in until after Nia came back from work. I would take a pole class like I’d secretly always wanted and, afterward, eat back my calories with my fill of Jeni’s ice cream. Now that Frederick was finally out of the picture, I could just do me. And I was the only one, it seemed, who could do me right.
“You’re handling all of this exceptionally well,” Nia observed. She hadn’t stopped staring at me since I sat down, assessing me for any cracks in my facade.
“I know.” I peered up at her through my lashes. “I mean. What else can I do? I’ve emailed Dr. Wallace to come up with a contingency plan, and I’m going to stay the hell away from men. Everything else is kind of out of my hands.” Tom, one of our annoying downstairs neighbors, turned on his music, cranking the volume up so high that I could feel the bass through our floorboards. But I didn’t have to wake up early tomorrow, and I was too drained to care. “What I’m saying is . . . I guess I decided there was no point in being miserable anymore.”
Nia held my gaze for a long moment. It had been eleven years since she’d slammed her tray down next to mine in our high school cafeteria and declared us “Sisters in Blerdom,”* and I’d yet to meet anyone who understood me more. If I had anything to hide, Nia would see right through me. But, for once, I was laying myself bare.
After a moment, Nia rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically.